Letters to the Editor
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harassment
"Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women."
So why is it that I've never heard male boss says to his male underling "if you want to get ahead in this company, you need to give me head?" but I've had that said to me. In one company that I worked in the male chief of staff like to grab a little T&A every now and then. Strangely enough it was only the female interns that he tried for, never the male ones. Oh and when my male coworker kept on trying to pursue me to go out with even after I told him flat out that there was no way in hell that it would ever happen, even if he was the last man on the planet, he was probably propositioning my male coworkers in the same manner? Following them around, trying to rub their shoulders, smell their hair, leave them little notes, tell them how much they wanted to get to know them in a special way...Yeah right.
I don't mind having a boss tear me a new a-hole just like my male coworkers when I screw up...just as long as he doesn't try to screw me.
God, I'm so sick of the excuse that men just like/need casual sex so much that they HAVE to pursue their coworkers or subordinates. Did they never learn that somethings are OFF LIMITS? What happened to self-control? I mean I really want and need a new car, especially a Mini...they are so cute and shiny. I guess I'll just have to go and steal my neighbor's...you know he does tempt me with it by parking it outside my house. It's just begging for me to take it for a spin...I just can't help myself!
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Good on Miss M
What Miss M. said.
As to house work, when I was a boy, I was a slob. My wife made it clear that she wanted that to end. I wanted her to stay, so I learned not to be a slob, and to carry my end of the housework stick. We have reached an agreement on the level that we are both comfortable about, and keep the house at that level, which, from my experience, is what real partners do.
Roiphe makes excuses for the spoiled kid I was, but why? Does she lack the self-respect my wife has?
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To the Anonymous with subject line : "Why it matters..."
I see no women in this thread bashing me. You're projecting.
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watch_this_space,
Those conditions include Roiphe presenting a supposed "alternative voice" about gender inequality, when, in fact, she is simply saying the material conditions of the world are just fine thanks, and that the only problem is women's attitudes towards those conditions.
See, I just don’t think this is what she’s saying. I think she’s saying that relationships, and identifying causes for sexual experiences, is complex. When you have a situation where a girl willingly goes to a party, willingly drinks to much (and she's not new to alcohol or college parties), willingly goes to bed with a guy...and then the next day wonders if she made the right choice...and is told she was the victim of date rape...I think we have a real problem. That situation was going on back then. I can't speak to what the situation is today.
I think also that she’s counting on a dialogue. Her quotation of Didion is very important: there have to be people at the baracades, and there have to be people at the cocktail party. She identifies herself as the latter. But the very nature of the quote assumes that those women on the front line are important and are doing good work. I don’t think that in questioning a form of feminism she's saying things are just fine. That would be like saying if you don't want to throw out the US government, you must have no problem with the policies of Bush. I think Roiphe sees good in the relationships men and women have, even as she sees problems. In a sense, I think she's saying it's a part of the human condition that things can't be just fine. For anyone. And not that we should just take it, but that as mature adults it doesn't hurt us to accept we will find no perfect solutions even as we look for better ones.
I very much believe you have the right to critique her. I don’t think any one in the public eye is “above” such treatement. But what you get out of her books sounds very different from what I’m hearing. I’m hearing that sex is an area of mutual responsibility, and that women shouldn’t approach sex with fear, or be aggressively pushed to define a situation as rape when it might be something else.
I’m don't know your age, but I was a junior undergrad when The Morning After came out. Along with Paglia, Roiphe was a breath of fresh air, someone who didn’t see sex as a nightmare situation, from the start a punishing world of pain and abuse. Her more complex view of male-female interactions were closer to what I saw going on between the men and women I knew, and closer to what I experienced in my own male-male interactions (I know for me “no” certainly doesn’t always mean “no”; I’ve allowed myself to be in situations that compromised me, and that I knew I bore some—not all, by a long shot—responsibility for, because I agreed to them, and was somewhat into them even as I was also against them). It seemed to me that women—all women—were really being pushed at that time to consider themselve the victim of rape, the victim of brutal men, likely the victim of sexual abuse in childhood. It was a really good time for the repressed memory syndrome on the one hand and the very loose definition of date rape which was all a girl on campus had to satisfy—and with which a man could be expelled and his whole life ruined—on the other. In other words, I think it was a pretty dark time.
This does not mean real rape doesn’t occur. Nor that these rapes can't happen on dates. Nor that there aren’t abusive men. But I think Roiphe was providing a corrective for a ridiculously extreme swing of the pendulm.